Overall I’m extremely satisfied with the performance and feature set of the DRW-8800 AAN Dual drive. I was able to obtain the expected performance from a 8x DVD+R and 4x DVD+RW drive. There were no compatibility problems with a 4x DVD-R that I tried burning with the drive and it’s rather unfortunate that 8x DVD-R are rather rare where I live. The price of the DRW-8800 AAN online at Newegg was an excellent $95 for the retail box, which I’m reviewing. Dual format 8x drives for $95 are rare in this day and age where similar drives from I/O Magic retail at $149 (after $30 rebate) at Circuit City and Sony 8x drives which are similar retail for $249.

So what do I dislike about the DRW-8800 AAN? I wish AOpen had included media with the drive like they did with their 4410. While the price of the 8x dual +/- RW drive is inexpensive, it would have made testing a lot easier. Also, a small nitpick, but I wish AOpen had included a driver floppy in case people are still using Windows 95 and need to install DOS drivers.

The bottom line is this. If you’re looking for an inexpensive 8x Dual-Format DVD +/- RW drive, you really can’t go wrong with the AOpen DRW-8800 AAN. It has decent burning performance, great compatibility with both formats and is ready for when 8x DVD +/- R media hits the mainstream.

Burn Performance - 9 Read Performance - 8 Rewrite performance - 8 Features - 9 Compatibility - 10 Price - 9 Availability - 9 Setup - 10 Support - 9 Software - 7 Total: 88